Image: from Yak and Gnu, illustrated by Cat Chapman, published by Walker Books Australia

Being a children's writer involves...

writing...

Hypnotising children...

     and reading.

and fighting illustrators.

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More details on the fight:

I was asked to engage in mortal combat with Sarah Davis, ferocious champion illustrator, at a dinner held by the Children's Book Council of Australia. Results below.
​

"Give us an animal! And an activity!"
​
​The audience threw us the awkward combination of a chinchilla (huh?), locusts and golf. This is what we came up with, in a fretful 20 minutes (well, Sarah was cool as a cucumber; I was sweating like a cornered ferret, my mind fizzing horribly).

Priscilla Chinchilla prepared for her swing -
golfing was really a ferretish thing -
others would try it; they'd begged and they'd pleaded.
But no-one could swing it EXACTLY as she did.

What glory it was to be born a chinchilla!
What fortune! What joy! An absolute thriller!
But just as she swung, at that moment of focus,
down came a thunderous swarming of locusts!

Nine angry bugs came down from the sky,
and gone was her club in the blink of an eye!
Then gone was the grass-
and the tee - and the ball -
till NOTHING was left of the fairway at all.

"WHY ME?" cried Priscilla, "WHAT have I done?
You locusts have ruined my great hole-in-one!
How spiteful! How mean!" And she fell to the ground,
with ferretish sobs (a rather odd sound).

In one buzzing voice, neither spiteful nor mean,
the locusts cried "Give us a turn on the green!
You hogged it, young ferret; you forced us to fight,
for GOLF's an inviolable Animal Right."

And so she reformed, that young golfing pro,
and kindly allowed other creatures a go.
And a golfer more great there has never been born,
than Priscilla, who coached all those locusts till dawn."

© Juliette MacIver 2015

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